DMDK moves SC to review GAIL pipeline order

DMDK on Saturday moved the Supreme Court with a petition seeking to review its February 2 order, quashing the state government's notification restraining GAIL from laying a LNG pipeline through agricultural lands across seven districts. Jayalalithaa government on Thursday decided to move the SC with a review petition. The move comes against the backdrop of protests by farmers and political parties.TNN | February 07, 2016, 16:32 IST

Representative ImageChennai: DMDK on Saturday moved the Supreme Court with a petition seeking to review its February 2 order, quashing the state government's notification restraining GAIL from laying a LNG pipeline through agricultural lands across seven districts. Jayalalithaa government on Thursday decided to move the SC with a review petition. The move comes against the backdrop of protests by farmers and political parties.

The petition filed by DMDK treasurer A R Elangovan and propaganda secretary and Erode East MLA V C Chandhirakumar argued that the alternate route along national highways was available, and there was no valid and acceptable reason, as to why this alignment should not be accepted.

The present alignment of 310km in Tamil Nadu, connecting Kochi in Kerala to Mangalore in Karnataka would affect the livelihood of about 5,500 small farmers in 134 villages. The width of the area (66ft) covered under the "Right of Use" would make the agricultural operation commercially unviable, and the land virtually worthless, it said.

"The reasons given by GAIL (not to take the alignment along national highways) are only superficial," the petition said. Just because more number of permissions need to be taken from different authorities and that the new alignment would be more expensive was no excuse to reject the proposal of the state government to have the pipelines along the national highways, it said. In Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, the alignment was along national highways, the petition added. The project is in national interest, but that did not mean it should be at the cost of lives and livelihood of large number of poor farmers, it said.

The seven districts of Coimbatore, Erode, Salem, Tirupur, Namakkal, Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri, affected by the project face huge water problems and are coconut belts. The restrictions on digging of wells, planting of trees will ruin livelihood, which is the reason as to why the emotions are stronger and protests have come up particularly after the full implication of the project were made known to the farmers/land owners, the petition said.